Book Launch: The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers, SA version

Last night we saw my friend Dougie get interviewed by Rian Malan at the South African launch of The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe.

We attended the New York launch party of this book, also, as I mentioned earlier. Here at the Boekehuis, Joburg's best independent bookstore, the dedicated crowd hung on every word. The bookshop was not only crowded, it was intent -- probably because the Zimbabwe story is only a stone's throw away.

The SA book cover is different from the US cover (wish I'd painted either of them, but we ran out of time -- the publisher was in a rush). The SA one is more literal, an actual photo of the empty swimming pool at Douglas' parents' resort, whereas the albino frog on the US cover refers to an anecdote in the story as well as the "white outsiders" that the Rogers family sometimes is and sometimes is not in Zimbabwe.

For more info on Douglas and his book, see www.douglasrogers.org

"mine" exhibition opening

My exhibition "mine" opened last night at the AshantiGold gallery in the Turbine Hall, Johannesburg. Thanks to all who came -- there was a great turnout. The show will be up until the end of January 2010.

Ricky Burnett's intro to the "mine" catalogue

A Slant of Light
by Ricky Burnett

A poem by Emily Dickinson begins: "There's a certain slant of light, winter afternoons / that oppresses like the heft of cathedral tunes." Lines ripe with portent. But the lines that follow, "…when it comes the landscape listens / shadows hold their breath…" make me, well, hold my breath.

When a certain light comes the landscape listens, is alert, is attentive, it is, perhaps, waiting and anticipating: a landscape bristling with intimations of awareness. The world is not dead but sensate. The world has a look, variable and intense, that speaks of mood and attitude. What an intrinsically painterly thought – the search for aliveness in the look of things, the world attentive to itself and listening. And, listening by light! Or, should it be listening to the light, or even, perhaps, listening through the light? What a delicious, but essentially painterly, paradox, this is: listening to, or by, or through light.

Nechama Brodie's intro to the "mine" catalogue

As below, so above

By Nechama Brodie

Before there were gold mines, there was grassland. Russet grass and red grass and giant spear grass, and occasional trees in sheltered outcrops and kloofs. This is Rocky Highveld Grassland, transitional vegetation that occurs between the true grasslands of the inland plateau and the bushveld; grasses that grow in rocky mountains, hills, ridges and plains of quartzite, conglomerate, shale, dolomite and andesitic lava.

Johannesburg sits on the edge of a 3,2 billion-year-old granite dome, formed at the same time as the earth's continental crust and extending 70 kilometres north to Tshwane. This is the oldest rock formation in Gauteng, and is the basement on which bands of younger sedimentary and volcanic rocks were later deposited.

The Boers named this place the Witwatersrand, white waters ridge, apparently because of the waterfalls running off the area's stony outcrops. In reality, there was no water, not in any great quantities; it is possible that quartz and iron pyrite deposits in the stone may have reflected light, giving the appearance of water. The city is, however, divided by a continental watershed. Streams to the north of Johannesburg flow into the Crocodile River then into the Limpopo, making its way to the warm Indian Ocean on the east cost. Water flowing on the southern side of the city ends up in the Vaal, joining the Orange River before travelling a thousand kilometres to reach the icy Atlantic Ocean on the west coast.

Book Launch: Resident Alien by Rian Malan

We went to Rian Malan's book launch at The Radium Beerhall last night. Resident Alien is a collection of his magazine articles from the past 20 years.

I loved the speeches -- by Rian himself, by his friend Steven "Boytjie" Sidley who harbored Rian when he fled to Los Angeles, and by the publisher.

Each illuminated what an outcast Rian has made himself by espousing difficult beliefs -- for example, that AIDS is an exaggerated crisis, with numbers inflated in order to garner more international funding. I can't wait to read the book.

The Radium is one of my favorite places in Joburg. The oldest pub still open in the city, it's cozy and real, with wood-clad walls and Guinness on tap.

For more on the launch and a book summary:
http://jonathanball.book.co.za/blog/2009/11/12/rian-malans-resident-alien-launched-at-the-radium-beer-hall/

Invitation to "mine" exhibition

In his new series of oil paintings, "mine", Niebuhr documents Joburg's mine dumps and finds three major themes:  a landscape that refuses to remember itself; a city built on fate and the forces of a gold rush; and the paradox of poisonous beauty -- the mine dumps may look like mountains of gold dust but their bleached appearance is actually the result of the toxic process of gold extraction.

The mine dumps are disappearing, cleared to recycle their minerals and to open new spaces for development.  Landmarks that people have known for years will be gone --but since mine dumps have no names, they will not be commemorated. 

Niebuhr finds a certain pathos in their disappearance.

Johannesburg would not exist but for the gold mines, and the dumps are their remnants.  Niebuhr says, "That's why the mine dumps are so specifically Joburg:  they are man-made, iconic, and represent the reasons we are here." 

Last, Niebuhr says he has been drawn to the mine dumps despite their toxicity.  "I've climbed them at dawn and at sunset," and he keeps coming back for more.  Using the Top Star drive-in cinema as a central point, he has been documenting the mine dumps from Randfontein on the West Rand to Boksburg on the East.

Born here, Niebuhr has been painting Johannesburg for nearly a decade.  Working from his studio in Fordsburg, he makes cityscapes and urban portraits to capture the flux of decay and growth which so characterise Joburg, and "mine" is his latest statement on a city he considers truly his.